


A Violent Connection

by RobberBaroness



Category: Firefly, River Tam Beats Up Everyone (fictional movie), xkcd
Genre: Gen, Ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 20:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1278517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two differing viewpoints on the day River Tam beat up everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Violent Connection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [looneyngilo2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/looneyngilo2/gifts).



Existentialism is hard to keep up. Despair is easy, but being philosophical about it? That takes discipline, and on the day River Tam beat up everyone, I was all out of discipline. Jobless for going on two years now- so much for my college degree!- lonely and despondent, I was so wrapped up in my sorrows that I hardly even noticed the confused shouts from across the street. I might never have even known what happened if she hadn’t knocked on my door.

Swinging it open, I found myself face to face with an angel. An angel who had come bearing more than simply words of inspiration. She bore her fists and her feet, as I was soon to find out when she knocked me flat on my back. I scrambled back up, but she was ready, and got me in the gut. As I knelt down, desperate to regain my breath, I saw her coming closer.

I braced myself for another attack, but instead she spoke straight to my soul, her voice sad but kind.

“You are real. You matter to me.”

And with one more roundhouse kick, she was off. I was never to see her again, but I feel her presence every day. I see her in the dents in my neighbors’ fences, the confused town council meetings discussing how to prevent small girls from beating everybody up, the sudden ban on all children’s martial arts classes. I will always remember the day that River Tam considered me enough of a threat to take on- considered everyone a threat- and spoke the words that I most needed to hear.

I might have forgotten them if they hadn’t been accompanied by a flurry of waifish twirling and punching. What a fool I would have been!

It’s possible that all the talk of her being psychic is just hyperbole, and what River Tam is really good at is picking generalized phrases that could be applied to anyone. I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know is that I bless the day River Tam beat up everybone, and can only hope she’s still out there somewhere, fighting the good fight. She has my thanks, wherever she is.

***

“Well,” said Mal, “that’s one more planet we can never come to again. I sure hope it was worth it!”

If it was meant as a rebuke, it wasn’t taken as one. River stared into space, feeling the minds of everyone she had touched with her fists. With each strike, she had done more than read minds- she had felt them, absorbed their emotions into her consciousness. With such knowledge, she could give each and every soul what they needed- punishment, forgiveness, respect, hope. For once in her life, she had been an agent of kindness in addition to destruction. Looking down at her hands, River smiled.

Best not to try out her new gift on her shipboard companions, though. Super-soldier survivability or not, she didn’t much fancy being thrown out the airlock.


End file.
